Jack Of All Trades
by faithinthecharm
Summary: A murder on the other side of the world draws a grieving huntress into the notice of Sam and Dean. Will they help her defeat the spirit that killed her twin, or will suspicion drive them away?
1. Three Weeks

**Jack of all Trades**

**Chapter 1**

**Three Weeks**

The girl turned to the other, her mirror standing on the wharf side, grumbling about unreliable contacts, but there is laughter in their voices, and their breath steams the cold night air.

They hear a sound behind them, and turn expecting to see the old man they've been waiting for since early evening, but instead they see nothing, one young woman drops into a fighting stance, the other mutters a protection spell, then from the silence all hell breaks loose.

There is maniacal laughter and heavy metal clawed hands rent the air, neither sister is fast enough and silence reigns again, all too quickly.

Two dreamers jerk awake, one, all too pleased it was just a dream, the other all too aware that it was not.

- - -

"Hey Luc, you're fine, it's OK, we're all here."

The girl, Lucia De' Silva, sits up, quickly in a hospital bed, but is quickly overwhelmed by the dizziness the suddenness of the movement brings and the pain in her head and back. Also she notices the lie, they are not all there.

"Where's Karmen?"

Her mother turned away unable to look her daughter in the eye.

"Pa?" She demanded

"You're sister is in the blessed beyond now!"

Lucia attempted to drag herself upright and suddenly the reason for the pain in her back became clear, as she felt the skin tear.

Her mother pressed the call button hanging by the bed, and a nurse appeared, putting a bright, sympathetic and at least partially false smile on her face.

"Well young lady, at least you're awake, but these cuts...we cannot get them to heal, even when you weren't moving your stitches tore!"

"How long have I been here?" Lucia asked.

"Three weeks..." Her mother replied wanly

"Three weeks...oh my god, we're twenty-five."

She caught the pain on her mothers' face "I'm twenty-five" She corrected. She turned to the nurse "How long until I can leave?"

"Oh not for a while yet dear!"

Four hours later, she was in her car, patched up and with a file on the Legend of Spring Heeled Jack on the passenger seat.


	2. Chasing

A/N: Springheeled Jack info from: http://en. 2

**Chasing**

"Sam, you've told me nothing! You have a dream about a girl, who loses her sister in a fight with a demon, and no we're going hunting...what?"

Sam spun the laptop in his brothers direction to show a picture of a human shaped demon, with read glowing eyes, a winged cape and red glowing eyes.

"That.." he pointed and his brother read the description beneath.

A wide variety of explanations have been proposed by authors who support the paranormal origin of Spring Heeled Jack. Due to the inherent nature of the phenomenon, such theories are speculative and bereft of any proof. The following are just a few:

A common hypothesis proposes Spring Heeled Jack as an extraterrestrial entity, somehow stranded on Earth. Supporters of this theory believe this would explain his non-human appearance and features, (e.g., retro-reflective red eyes, or phosphorous breath), his jumping ability (by suggesting that he may have been native of a planet with greater gravitational pull, like astronauts experienced on the Moon), strange behavior (which could have been altered through Solipsism Syndrome or as a result of breathing the gases present at the Earth's atmosphere), and his longevity.

A visitor from another dimension, who could have entered into this plane through a wormhole or dimensional gate.

A demon, accidentally or purposefully summoned into this world by practitioners of the occult or who made himself manifest simply to create spiritual turmoil.

The supporters of the paranormal explanations usually refer as proof of their claims that no human could have ever used a gadget to leap the way Spring Heeled Jack was said to, by pointing out that in the 20th century, the German Army experimented on the subject with disastrous effects. Allegedly, such experiments gave an estimated 85 rate of failure, with broken legs and ankles on the testers. They conclude that there was no possibility for an individual to succeed where an official warfare project failed, especially considering that the former had preceded it by many decades. It might be worth noting that there currently is a comparable device being marketed , but this gadget requires modern, state-of-the-art carbon fiber springs.

"Why, the sister's already dead...has been for three weeks according to the news reports, so why did you get me up at 5am to research?" Dean asked grouchily.

"Because it's not done yet, it wounded her three weeks ago, and those wounds have not healed, at all...and now she's chasing it!"

He remembered the second dream she'd invaded, he had seen in, the wound where she had struck her head scarring, to leave a single subtle strand of white hair, that she would never dye, she would keep as a memory, a kick every time she looked in the mirror, a constant nagging reminder that she was still alive and her twin, the one of them who had departed a little from their ancestral life as a hunter, ha got married and had children of her own, had rebelled, and that she, Lucia, the good little soldier had survived. Sam had felt that emotional turmoil and he had felt the physical pain as she had sat back in the car and disturbed the dressing on her back.

Sam knew this woman needed them and Dean, however much he complained, had learned better than to ignore his little brothers prophetic dreams.


	3. Collision

A/N: Sorry it's been ages, work, study and life have kinda got in the way, my stuff will be patchy for a good while yet, but, it will come. I promise.

Please R&R as usual.

**Chapter 3**

**Collision**

Lucia backed the car from the space it had occupied in the hotel lot, grimacing as she looked over her damaged shoulder as she put the car into reverse so she could leave the parking space of the motel.

It had been pointless to stop anyway, even if her back hadn't hurt too much for any other kind of sleep than the useless overwhelmed by exhaustion kind, her mind was whirring to fast for sleep to come easy.

She was alone, not in a 'this is the first time I've ever slept in a room by myself' way, she was twenty five years old that would just be strange, but in a weird, complete and rather terrifying way. She had always been and would always be an identical twin, sure growing up, it had been a pain in the ass, she hadn't even got to have the womb to herself, let alone a bedroom, but they had had no secrets, sometimes they dreamed each others dreams, as if sharing a genetic code bound them, so the idea of being completely alone, in such a final way, as her sisters death, was totally alien to her.

Unfortunately these thoughts once again proved to be too much of a distraction, and, looking but not seeing she ploughed straight into the nose of a black Chevy Impala.

Her mind told her to do her usual, to go on the defensive, no matter if she was wrong or not, in the current situation that would be to leap from her rental car, which was now busted up to hell, and likely to cost more than she had right now to fix, and start shouting the odds. Her body, however did not want to play and sat, disconnected from her mind, in no shape to do anything so energetic as leaping. The jolt from the impact made her lurch forward in her seat, and the tiny amount of healing on her magically charged justs gave up the ghost. The fragile new skin burst and her body pumped as much blood from the wounds as it had when they were fresh.

Two young men pulled themselves from the battered Impala, and the shorter of the two let rip, perfectly comfortable doing what Lucia could not.

"God dammit my car..."

Lucia listened as they came closer, her lethargy meaning she barely heard them, and kept watch of their progress in her wing mirror, until they came close enough to see her.

The taller of the two blocked the other from coming any closer, and spoke, his tone so soft it didn't carry to her.

"Dean, that's her."

"That's who, Sam?"

"The girl I dreamed about."

The shorter man, Dean, stepped forward and eyed her through the car window, like she was a zoo exhibit.

"Well, I suppose if you're gonna dream about stuff like you do, there are worse girls to put in there...and she was an identical twin?" He whistled through his teeth. This was enough to kick Lucia into some kind of action, though no where near as much as if she had been uninjured.

"'Scuse me!?" There was rage in her tone, but, she was sure these young men could see she was too exhausted to follow through on it. However stupid at least one of them was, she doubted that either were blind.

"You hit my damn car! I was just commenting that it was a good job, that you were a girl, and cute, and that my brother here has his thing going on or I'd be a hell of a lot angrier."

Lucia sighed and eased herself out of the car, trying not to catch the wounds on her back, that had just began to heal enough to allow her to sit at least a little more comfortably in the car than she had the day before.

"Look, I'm sorry, if you just give me your insurance details, I'll get on it as soon as I get home. I'm just a little too busy for this right now."

The taller man stepped forward, and spoke slowly, as if to a caged animal.

"We know Lucia...It is Lucia, right?" He fished for affirmation, but his tone unsure as to whether he actually wanted it or not.

The woman looked at Sam, her eyes slightly wild. She tried to calm down, she knew the hunting community in North America was small and the news of her sisters death may have traveled to these men. As she pushed down her panic, she reminded herself that three weeks was a long time in an industry that, even in the information age, knew better than to ignore the vibrations of the grapevine.

"And, what if I am?" She demanded of Sam. She knew she was being hostile, but the murder of a family member and coma can do that to a person.

"If you are, and I think you are, we'd like to help you with your problem."

"Or we did before you hit my car..." Dean mumbled, letting out a whoosh of air as his younger brother elbowed him in the ribs.

Lucia eyed them both skeptically before replying. "And if I don't want any help?"

This time Dean stepped in utilizing what he'd learned from Sam's dream and using it to hammer the point home, as his brothers softly, softly approach was definitely not catching hot, huntress, monkey.

"Then you'll die."


	4. Flip the Switch

**Chapter 4**

**Flick the switch**

Lucia gazed skeptically at the guy for a heartbeat or two.

"What dya mean I'll die? I know I'm gonna die. The deal was I was supposed to die first, but she's had her kids, the legacy remains intact, which is all anyone else cares about, I just want to take the thing that killed my sister down with me."

The tone of the young huntress was flat and grim enough to disturb the two men.

It was the older who spoke first.

"You're in bad shape, you and your sister couldn't take this thing down when you and your now dead sister couldn't take this thing down when you were good to go...I mean I know you're a girl but... You need us!"

"You haven't even told me your names and I need you? I don't think so!"

"I'm Dean, this is Sammy, Winchester,...and yes you do!"

"It's SAM.. and you could at least let us take a look at your back." Sam ventured.

"And you know about that, how?"

"I er..."

Lucia cut Sam off mid flow. "You have dreams, you have the dreams and then he kills the stuff that you dream about...It was how Karmen and I worked, she would find it and I would kill it...only this time she didn't see it coming and I wasn't fast enough to stop it. As for my back, I was in a coma, three weeks, lying still, under the care of skilled, well paid professionals, with proper equipment, but you think you can do better?"

Lucia knew she was being snappy, bordering on the shrewish, but she also knew that she was as much of a hunter as either of these guys and she had a job to do. More than a job, a vengeance gig. However, her back was hampering her a great deal and between the blood loss and the lack of sleep, she barely had the energy to stand and argue, let alone drive.

She caved in, grudgingly. "Fine, if it helps me to find this thing then you can see the wounds." Once again, she spoke dispassionately, as if she were talking about autopsy photos rather than vicious wounds that were still fresh, torn through her own, living, hurting, flesh,

She turned away from the Winchester's and slid, painfully back into her own car.

"Hey, you don't get to promise us a floor show and then leave!" Dean all but snarled.

Lucia lurched her car back into the space she had been leaving when she hit the black Impala.

"Inside" she explained curtly "I'm hardly going to flash my supernaturally scarred flesh in the parking lot, now am I? And that floor show comment, absolutely charming." She added sarcastically.

She let her own car and watched as the Winchesters parked their own, now maimed, car before leading the way back into the motel and taking back the key to the room that she'd just vacated.

The two men followed closely behind her, not pausing at the desk, the sight drawing a lewd remark from the greasy looking guy, who sat behind it, watching a small, busted looking TV, and clutching a bag of chips big enough to feed a small family for a week.

You had to admire a man who embraced a cliché so completely.

The remark went ignored by the female hunter, who was well used to comments like those by now, and allowed to slide by the younger brother, who was focused completely on the task at hand.

The older brother, however, heard, and reacted, spinning to grab the greasy guy by his pudgy neck, so quickly that the little pervert didn't even have time to drop his bag of chips.

Lucia turned and her own hand shot out to force the man to disengage. Turned out this was not a good plan.

"Dean, leave it alone, we don't have time!"

As her fingers closed on his wrist, she jerked away as a flood of unknown, unbidden, images, filled her mind.

"What is it?" Dean asked quickly, dropping Mr cliché, who landed in a heap on the floor, all without spilling a single potato chip.

"I don't...Yes I do know, they flipped the goddamn switch!"


End file.
